Introductions

If you thought it took me forever to complete a project before, you ain’t seen nothin yet.

I’d like you all to officially meet Rowan Elizabeth VanderHorck. Born August 9th, 2015, weighing in at 6 pounds 12 ounces, and measuring 20 1/4 inches long, she came barreling into our world via emergency C-section. And I can tell already that I’m going to have a hard time taking pictures of anything else from now on.

But! I’ll spare you all the gory details, lest I risk turning this into a “mommy blog,” full of birth stories and the myriad variations in baby-poop color and explosiveness. Wouldn’t you rather read funny stories about how I f*d up my house? So that’s probably all I’m going to say about her birth. And I’ll try to keep the baby pictures to a minimum.

Right after this one.

Anyway. We welcomed her home the only way we know how: by tearing apart her room and letting her nap in the middle of a DIY disaster area.

I know it’s been a couple of weeks, but you might remember from my last post that I was pretty proud of myself for assembling the crib and having only minimal pieces left over. Well, it turns out that my self-congratulation was a bit premature. We brought a sleeping Rowan home from the hospital, placed her oh-so-gently into her very own crib with its trendy mustache sheets, and promptly watched her roll helplessly downhill.

The crib mattress was not level. #BestParentsEver

I’m not going to take any blame for this one, though. Because seriously? Who would ever think that a level is one of the necessary tools for putting a crib together? I mean, I knew this whole parenting thing was going to be a learning experience, but this wasn’t really the type of lesson I was expecting.

At first, knowing that all of the floors in this house have their own unique slope, and knowing there was no easy way to adjust the mattress platform without disassembling the crib, we tried just turning the crib around (and by “we” I mean “Chris,” because I was on doctor’s orders not to lift anything heavier than the baby). My logic was simple: if both the floor and the platform were sloping the same way, that would be a pretty steep hill. But if we turned the crib around, maybe the floor slope would cancel out the mattress slope? Maybe?

No dice.

So Chris proceeded to take the crib apart while I stood back and took pictures. At one point, he looked at me with my camera in my hand, watching him wrestle with that damn crib, sweat forming on his brow, and I could tell he was not enjoying himself. So I said, “I know this is frustrating right now, but it’ll be funny in like, a week, I swear. Trust me.”

My persuasion was met only with a sardonic smile and a slight shake of the head before he returned to the task at hand.

Comments

well congratulations and you didn’t f*ck this one up she is precious and love that she is sticking her tongue out at the world already, take it easy momma rest when she is sleeping and ask for help when you need it xx

Hooray for baby! A mis leveled crib is one I never encountered. Mostly because it hurt to much to lift my boy out of the crib post c section so i co slept. Biggest mistake ever more than 3 years later. (I secretly love it though).

Fantastic job all around! Thanks for sharing the baby pictures and the story. I hope she continues to make appearances in your blog – as I can only imagine adventures in parenting will only add to the funny stories about your house.

Omg congratulations, Sarah!! Sounds like Rowan made quite an entrance (SUCH a great name choice, by the way). I’m so glad you have this blog so I can follow all your updates. And I concur, I don’t think a “how we met/gave birth” post would turn this into a mommy blog. I mean, labor is pretty much *the* DIY project of a lifetime, right?